Why are we willing to say that it is unacceptable that no computer can kill people on the road when almost 43,000 die in the USA due to humans driving?

This part is bogus to me as well. My friend who used to work in self-driving said that when self driving can be "just" better than human driving, technology has won. In statistical terms, it means having slightly lesser fatalities than humans (<43k fatalities with respect to the num of human drivers).

Now it's up for debate lesser by how much exactly. Just 5% reduction or 50% reduction. If we want to go for 99% reduction, we should stop building self-driving tech altogether.